Get Out the Vote Time — to Stop Fascism

I don’t think I’ve ever written one of these columns using the word fascism in the title. Unfortunately, very unfortunately, I think it’s accurate for what we are facing under Trump and his Republican Party if at least one house of Congress is not lost by the Republicans on November 6.

I remember a meeting in Washington, DC a couple of days before Trump’s inauguration on January 20, 2017. 50 or 60 of us were making plans for what turned out to be a very successful nonviolent blockade by a thousand or more people of many of the entrances into the Trump inauguration ceremony. Someone made a comment about how he was very concerned about what would happen after Mafioso Don took office and we had to operate under conditions of fascism. I spoke up and said that I didn’t agree with that point of view, that having a President who wants to rule in a fascist-like way didn’t mean it was going to happen, that between the courts and the press and maybe the Democrats and definitely our independent resistance movement, there were reasons to have hope that we could forestall fascism.

So far, I think the united front of resistance in all its different forms has done that, even as, on one front after the other, we are either moving backwards or standing still. But if the Republicans maintain control of Congress in this election, we and the rest of the world are in deep shit.

Polls continue to show that a big majority of the US voting population is down on Trump. But if that majority doesn’t come out to vote in big numbers the polls really don’t matter.

I’ve been thinking about what I personally can do beyond what I’ve done so far, which is: speak with friends and people I know about the importance of this election—write in these columns and elsewhere urging people to do the right thing November 6—and put up a yard sign for the Democrat running for Congress in my district. If there was a strong progressive who had a decent chance of winning for the House or the Senate in my area, I’d probably be doing a lot of work for them, but there just isn’t such a person.

I’ve decided that what I’ll do, over the next two weeks leading up to election day, is make a lot of calls to people I know but who I don’t know well enough to be sure that they’re going to come out and vote. I plan to call dozens of people over that time, maybe as many as 100.

That’s my personal plan to help prevent Trump and the Republican’s continuing control of Congress, to forestall fascism. I hope others who aren’t already actively working in the way they’ve decided is right for them will do the same.

Each of us ultimately has but one thing to offer to the cause of justice and human progress: our life and how we use it for good. Let’s all do so right now, as much as we can over the next two weeks.